We underestimate the importance of what we are doing here in Berlin. We tell our friends that we study Talmud, and reduce it to pithy words like “interesting” and “cool” and “tradition” and and and. We don’t use the word “important”, we don’t say that the world only exists on account of the breath of children babbling in the house of the rabbi (Shabbat 119b), we don’t say that the Torah is flaming fire in the bodies of those who learn it (Taanit 4a), we don’t say that the study of Torah is as infinite as kindness (Peah 1:1). We forget sometimes that we are poets and messiahs and children of prophets. Let’s not underestimate what’s happening here at the Kreuzberg Kollel. This is a training camp for saving the world. If it’s just “interesting”, we’ve failed big time.
The key to it all is midrash. This is the grammar of the rabbinic project, and we have to learn the rules: kal vachomer, gezera shava, binyan av, and so on. Each of the rules have rules too. Ein onshin min hadin, we don’t learn the rules of punishment from kal vachomer. A gezera shava should have superfluous words in both texts inviting explanation, otherwise, one may and must argue against it. These rules look funny from the outside, a silly Jewish mind-game. But the primal assumption here is that words mean more than they say, and that there is a way to let them express that. “But you’re just making it up!” No. There are rules, there’s a method, there are sparks of prophecy in this game. This is oral Torah, passed from mouth to mind through the generations; any midrash that wasn’t deeply true was forgotten. Words mean more than they say, and not just words. The Torah is where we sharpen our midrashic tools, but the world is where we apply them. People mean more than they say too, so do natural and political events. Our world is beautiful and meaningful and important, beyond what can be expressed in words and facts.
We have to become masters of midrash, it’s the last hope for this world. Midrash asks deep questions, and weaves together new answers from old threads. Midrash insists that everything is potentially connected, delights in the process of connecting and creating, and most importantly: defies fundamentalism. The last year at the kollel has been a hell of a ride, and our discussion of Rabbi Eliezer and his gang wasn’t an escape from that. (Half the learners survived a terrorist attack, others bear the weight of gender-based oppression, political systems crumbled around us, we joined protests, a virus reshaped our societal dynamics overnight.) The fundamentalist voice is becoming louder and more appealing throughout Europe and the world, offering clear and simple answers in a loud voice. But we, armed with midrash, hear the still small voice that silently declares: things mean more than they say.
Judaism has its share of fundamentalism, and it’s promised answers to the troubles of the world before. The most boring versions of Judaism were founded here in Germany: the ‘religion of reason’ of Hermann Cohen, the scientific Judaism of the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, the neo-Orthodox identity politics of Samson Raphael Hirsch, the Zionist Muskeljudenthum. Secular or atheist or cultural Judaism, trendy in Germany in the last century, also feel empty. None of these feel relevant as a complete system to the Jews I know today, although we steal their ideas freely. The discussions at the Kreuzberg Kollel on the other hand, whether in Jeremy and Rebecca’s living room or in the chat on the side of the Zoom meeting, have been fantastic; a dance between queer theory and Aramaic grammar, sharing thoughts on our prayer experiences and on Biblical archaeology, making halachic decisions for pandemic situations and looking at the void of chaos as we shaped it into order. We don’t have a name for our movement, and we don’t need one. We’re busy enough making it up as we live it out.
(We’re not romantic, we see the difficulties in inheriting this tradition and not offering satisfying answers. Sabrina said: I want to scream. Avinoam taught that the world is overwhelming, and didn’t show us a way out. Sometimes the chevrutas didn’t really work, we just read words together and didn’t feel the fire. Sometimes an argument was left unresolved and we went away frustrated. But we kept coming back.)
I was recently skipping through Wikipedia articles, going from link to link, discovering new worlds - (Yes, I learn like that, I’m not ashamed!) - and came across “The Metamodernist Manifesto”. I recognised a lot of my midrashic mission in it. “All information is grounds for knowledge, whether empirical or aphoristic, no matter its truth-value. We should embrace the scientific-poetic synthesis and informed naivety of a magical realism.” The midrash I want to come out of our Beit Midrash is exactly that. Everything is brimming with significance, everything has something to say, everything is important. We know the limitations of the systems we use (language, religion, politics), and we become experts in using them. The Talmud is just the beginning!
I haven’t said anything on our chapter yet, so maybe I will close with a tiny thought. Our chapter deals with Brit Milah. Milah, circumcision, also means ‘word’, and there is a covenant both in the body and in language (Sefer Yetzirah 1:3). What makes circumcision unique (Shabbat 132a) is that it was commanded with thirteen mentions of the word brit, ‘covenant’. But this uniqueness, which in our chapter was the cause for so much discussion, is actually reminiscent of another section of Torah known as the brit shelosh-esreh, the ‘covenant of the thirteen’ (Rosh Hashana 17b), that refers to God’s response to Moshe’s demands to know God’s way of being-in-the-world (Exodus 34). God cries out a series of cryptic words, counted by the rabbis as thirteen distinct attributes of divinity: mercy, gracious, forgiving, unforgiving, Adonai, Truth, and so on. Like Brit Milah, these aspects function as a mark on the world. Whenever these attributes are experienced in the world, whenever we express them in the world, God is manifested there. Like a gezera shava, we see God’s kindness and kindness in the world, God’s truth and anything true, as inextricably linked. These thirteen attributes, known as the shelosh-esreh middot, is the same name as we use for the thirteen rules of midrash-making (Introduction to Sifra): “Said Rabbi Ishmael: By thirteen principles (middot) is the Torah expounded.” Words and bodies, committing to covenants and experiencing the divine, interpreting the world and being in the world - we dance between them with the informed naivety of a magical realism - everything is connected, nothing is important, everything is important!
The key to it all is midrash. This is the grammar of the rabbinic project, and we have to learn the rules: kal vachomer, gezera shava, binyan av, and so on. Each of the rules have rules too. Ein onshin min hadin, we don’t learn the rules of punishment from kal vachomer. A gezera shava should have superfluous words in both texts inviting explanation, otherwise, one may and must argue against it. These rules look funny from the outside, a silly Jewish mind-game. But the primal assumption here is that words mean more than they say, and that there is a way to let them express that. “But you’re just making it up!” No. There are rules, there’s a method, there are sparks of prophecy in this game. This is oral Torah, passed from mouth to mind through the generations; any midrash that wasn’t deeply true was forgotten. Words mean more than they say, and not just words. The Torah is where we sharpen our midrashic tools, but the world is where we apply them. People mean more than they say too, so do natural and political events. Our world is beautiful and meaningful and important, beyond what can be expressed in words and facts.
We have to become masters of midrash, it’s the last hope for this world. Midrash asks deep questions, and weaves together new answers from old threads. Midrash insists that everything is potentially connected, delights in the process of connecting and creating, and most importantly: defies fundamentalism. The last year at the kollel has been a hell of a ride, and our discussion of Rabbi Eliezer and his gang wasn’t an escape from that. (Half the learners survived a terrorist attack, others bear the weight of gender-based oppression, political systems crumbled around us, we joined protests, a virus reshaped our societal dynamics overnight.) The fundamentalist voice is becoming louder and more appealing throughout Europe and the world, offering clear and simple answers in a loud voice. But we, armed with midrash, hear the still small voice that silently declares: things mean more than they say.
Judaism has its share of fundamentalism, and it’s promised answers to the troubles of the world before. The most boring versions of Judaism were founded here in Germany: the ‘religion of reason’ of Hermann Cohen, the scientific Judaism of the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, the neo-Orthodox identity politics of Samson Raphael Hirsch, the Zionist Muskeljudenthum. Secular or atheist or cultural Judaism, trendy in Germany in the last century, also feel empty. None of these feel relevant as a complete system to the Jews I know today, although we steal their ideas freely. The discussions at the Kreuzberg Kollel on the other hand, whether in Jeremy and Rebecca’s living room or in the chat on the side of the Zoom meeting, have been fantastic; a dance between queer theory and Aramaic grammar, sharing thoughts on our prayer experiences and on Biblical archaeology, making halachic decisions for pandemic situations and looking at the void of chaos as we shaped it into order. We don’t have a name for our movement, and we don’t need one. We’re busy enough making it up as we live it out.
(We’re not romantic, we see the difficulties in inheriting this tradition and not offering satisfying answers. Sabrina said: I want to scream. Avinoam taught that the world is overwhelming, and didn’t show us a way out. Sometimes the chevrutas didn’t really work, we just read words together and didn’t feel the fire. Sometimes an argument was left unresolved and we went away frustrated. But we kept coming back.)
I was recently skipping through Wikipedia articles, going from link to link, discovering new worlds - (Yes, I learn like that, I’m not ashamed!) - and came across “The Metamodernist Manifesto”. I recognised a lot of my midrashic mission in it. “All information is grounds for knowledge, whether empirical or aphoristic, no matter its truth-value. We should embrace the scientific-poetic synthesis and informed naivety of a magical realism.” The midrash I want to come out of our Beit Midrash is exactly that. Everything is brimming with significance, everything has something to say, everything is important. We know the limitations of the systems we use (language, religion, politics), and we become experts in using them. The Talmud is just the beginning!
I haven’t said anything on our chapter yet, so maybe I will close with a tiny thought. Our chapter deals with Brit Milah. Milah, circumcision, also means ‘word’, and there is a covenant both in the body and in language (Sefer Yetzirah 1:3). What makes circumcision unique (Shabbat 132a) is that it was commanded with thirteen mentions of the word brit, ‘covenant’. But this uniqueness, which in our chapter was the cause for so much discussion, is actually reminiscent of another section of Torah known as the brit shelosh-esreh, the ‘covenant of the thirteen’ (Rosh Hashana 17b), that refers to God’s response to Moshe’s demands to know God’s way of being-in-the-world (Exodus 34). God cries out a series of cryptic words, counted by the rabbis as thirteen distinct attributes of divinity: mercy, gracious, forgiving, unforgiving, Adonai, Truth, and so on. Like Brit Milah, these aspects function as a mark on the world. Whenever these attributes are experienced in the world, whenever we express them in the world, God is manifested there. Like a gezera shava, we see God’s kindness and kindness in the world, God’s truth and anything true, as inextricably linked. These thirteen attributes, known as the shelosh-esreh middot, is the same name as we use for the thirteen rules of midrash-making (Introduction to Sifra): “Said Rabbi Ishmael: By thirteen principles (middot) is the Torah expounded.” Words and bodies, committing to covenants and experiencing the divine, interpreting the world and being in the world - we dance between them with the informed naivety of a magical realism - everything is connected, nothing is important, everything is important!